


the truth hurts (and secrets kill)

by renhyuck (thereisnoreality)



Series: murdery martrimony [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Implied Violence, M/M, Suburbia, they're an old married couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 20:04:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18835795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereisnoreality/pseuds/renhyuck
Summary: The best thing Ten loves about these woods is that it answers the age old question: if you were to scream and no one was to hear it, did you really scream at all? The answer is, of course you did, because as all philosophers always forgot - being the hideous old men they were - was that human beings were not the only creatures alive capable of hearing. And the trees are never alone. Especially in these woods.





	the truth hurts (and secrets kill)

**Author's Note:**

> -i wrote this at 3 am and it's absolutely unedited  
> \- there's not any real description of murder but if you are sensitive to these things, tread carefully, it is a serial killer fic after all
> 
> [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/thereisnoreality/playlist/0TjCtb71aXdQo8a8KdKmRG?si=hZSJA0DZSKqIcs8-MV9TSg)

Suburbia for all its clean cut lawns and sparkling custom home interiors - _New Marble Imported From Turkey!_ a sign outside the old Laughvellier’s home exclaims along with a grinning, very Botoxed real estate agent’s picture, the letters blocky and red, claiming attention from anyone who passed by - has one very, very big problem. 

“I miss the city,” Ten sighs, planting his cheek against the cold formica countertop, watching Kun hum along to some old marching ditty as he makes coffee. It’s hardly an appropriate song for the freshly bright Tuesday morning they’ve awoken to, given that it’s a WWII era song, but Ten adores Kun’s singing and thus would never orchestrate a situation which forced him to stop. 

Kun turns to look at him briefly before turning back just in time to catch the toast popping out of the toaster in his hand and dropping it on a plate before sliding it to Ten. “You say that, but you were the one who surprised me with this house,” Kun reminds him gently as he pushes the orange marmalade they’d gotten for an absolute _steal_ at last weekend’s farmers market towards Ten, a butter knife already pushed into the jar. Ten considers this, trying not to pout. He _had_ bought Kun the house, on their first anniversary as a married couple. It’s _his_ fault they’re stuck here.

“It’s too quiet here,” Ten mumbles, sitting up, his cheek peeling away from the surface with a painful stretch, to spread marmalade on his toast and taking a noisy bite. 

“Crumbs,” Kun warns without turning around from the coffee pot and Ten sighs, leaning over his plate as he takes another petulant bite. 

“ _Darling_ ,” Ten implores in Chinese and Kun turns back to face him, an amused eyebrow arched. “Let’s move back to the city. Let’s sell this place and go back to our old apartment.”

“The old apartment that had rats running up the walls twenty times a day and exactly two and a half minutes of hot water?” Kun asks, coming to sit beside him. “That apartment is the one you miss so badly?”

Ten makes a noise of dissatisfaction. “I don’t care about the apartment,” he sighs. “I care about the _life_. There was so much _more_ back in the city. It’s so boring here.”

“That’s because you have yet to leave the house this week,” Kun says archly, taking a pointed bite of his own toast. “Did you even change out of your pajamas yesterday?”

Ten looks down at his sleep clothes - an old pair of sweats he’d stolen from Johnny years ago in university and then never bothered to give back, and Kun’s old choir t-shirt. “Why would I?” He scoffs. “All I do is sit at a computer and cry over why word omission doesn’t exist in English.”

“It might be a nice change is all I’m saying,” Kun says lightly, finishing his breakfast quickly and dropping them in the sink. “Then you might not go crazy from doing the same thing every day.”

Ten sighs and lets his head slide back down to the countertop as Kun leaves the kitchen to get his jacket and briefcase. “I’ll miss you,” he mutters when Kun comes back, glasses on and blonde hair perfectly coiffed back - a indiscretion he’d somehow managed to slip by his uptight company with their uptight rules. Ten’s glad for it, Kun looks absolutely delectable blonde. As Ten has proved several times over. 

Kun just looks amused, and totally uncaring of Ten’s lethal boredom levels. “I will too,” he says, swinging by to drop a kiss on Ten’s cheek. Ten sits up and reels him back in before he can get very far, a hand wrapped around his tie for purchase, arching his neck to kiss Kun deeply. Kun allows it for a moment, a soft sigh escaping his lips and his free hand - the one not holding his inane briefcase - comes up slide around Ten’s waist, holding him. But then, the moment’s over too quickly and Kun steps back, clearing his throat. “I can’t go to work with a hickey again,” he tells a very put out Ten. “They’ll absolutely lambast me.”

“That’s because they’re all divorced old men and bitter about it,” Ten snipes back but he lets Kun go with a last peck on the cheek, sitting in silence until the garage door has rumbled shut and he can see Kun’s silver Range Rover pull out of the driveway through the bay windows. Then Ten drains his coffee, wolfs down his toast and puts all his dishes in the sink to be dealt with for later before heading upstairs.

His day is finally about to begin. 

 

Suburbia has many faults: the people are far too nosy, the streets far too quiet, and their grocery stores’ inventory reads like a list of Who Can Do It Blander, but the best thing Ten likes about it - not that there’s a long list there - is how full of nature it is. The woods behind his neighbourhood stretch out for miles in every direction and Ten absolutely adores spending hours walking through them, taking the sounds of nature and relishing in the stillness of the air. 

The best thing Ten loves about these woods is that it answers the age old question: if you were to scream and no one was to hear it, did you really scream at all? The answer is, of course you did, because as all philosophers always forgot - being the hideous old men they were - was that human beings were not the only creatures alive capable of hearing. And the trees are never alone. Especially in these woods.

Ten winks at a terrified looking squirrel as the body next to him lets out a last gurgle, a faint spurt of blood jumping out of the slit in his neck as if to protest this untimely death before slumping to stillness. The squirrel stares back at him, one large beady eye wide and open, the blood seeping across the mossy floor reflected in it’s dark, glassy orb, before it leaps up the trunk of a tree and scurries away. Ten watches it go, following it’s path until it disappears too far up into the leaves for his eyes to track before turning back to the body. 

He doesn’t know the man’s name, doesn’t know anything about him really, except that he drove a red Honda, had greasy brown hair and had eyed Kun up and down in the Trader Joe’s last weekend as if Kun was a last meal he was desperate to consume. Honestly, Ten wouldn’t have even bothered going through the whole routine if all the man had done was stare. They were both used to that, because human beings on a whole were greedy, selfish creatures who only thought of _their_ wants and _their_ needs before anyone else’s and both Kun and Ten were a bit too exotic for the whitest parts of liberal, suburbian California to escape notice, but - _but_ the man had done much more than that. Had grabbed Kun’s wrist, hard enough that there’d been a faint echo of a bruise there the next morning that Ten had gently inspected - fighting down his mounting rage all the while - and had leaned into his space, alcohol sour breath wafting over both of their faces. 

Thankfully, security had removed him from the store before Ten could yank out the butterfly knife he’d hidden in his boot and tear the man’s aorta to shreds. That would have been quite the giveaway and then where would he be? Certainly not helping Kun haul their numerous reusable grocery bags out into the trunk, that’s for sure. And Kun would have thrown a fit if Ten had landed himself in jail before helping unload the car. So at least there was some use for law enforcement - but not much.

Disposing a body is never fun work - _that_ bit follows before the light drains out of their eyes - but Ten is never sloppy about it. Why commit murder if you aren’t prepared to follow through on the work? He honestly believed that was the only reason people got caught: pure and simple laziness.

He heaves a giant breath when it’s all done, dusting off his hands and staring down at the ground to make sure no traces of blood remained. Only then, did Ten allow himself a small smile, only for a second, basking in the glow of a fresh kill, before heading back to his car. It was nearing mid afternoon and Kun would absolutely _murder_ him if the dishes from that morning were still in the sink when he got back from work. 

 

His handiwork doesn’t show up on the news until a few nights later when they’re hosting a small dinner party and someone had turned the TV on for background noise. He doesn’t even notice, too caught up in helping Kun with the appetizers in the kitchen, until someone gasps, a perfectly manicured hand flying up to clutch the string of fat pearls curling around her neck. 

“Oh, that’s just awful!”

Ten glances up at the screen. The body had been discovered, pulled out of the river last night and the according to the reporter on screen, a mournful look crossing her usually neutral face, the cause of death had been a single slit to the throat - precisely at the carotid artery. 

“According to multiple reports, the police have found bodies like this all over the district, all with the same injury. They’ve taken to calling him-” a dramatic pause with a stare into the camera and Ten can’t help the twitch of his lips. “The Bleeder.”

 _What a terrible name_. Ten lets himself have a second of disgust before pressing it all down to deal with later. When they don’t have half a dozen guests sitting in their living room. He shouldn’t have expected these people to come up with a better name for him but _honestly_ \- the Bleeder?

“That’s a horrible name,” Kun murmurs next to him, setting down the still hot tray gently down on the counter. Ten twists to look at him but Kun is still staring at the TV, a neutral expression on his face. 

“I thought so too,” Ten says, sweeping the appetizers onto a serving tray and brushing around him.

“ _Darling_ ,” Kun says in Chinese and Ten glances over his shoulder. Kun is watching him, eyes dark and glimmering in the warm light of kitchen. “ _Turn that off, it’s getting a little too uneasy in here._ ”

“Of course,” Ten says, smiling sweetly before walking into the living room. 

It’s only after the party has well and truly finished and they’re both clearing up the living room that Ten takes a minute to himself to disappear into the bathroom. He stares at himself in the mirror. The body had been found in the river - pulled out by the police. Miles and miles away from his original spot. Ten watches himself break into a slow smile, his fingers clenching on the rim of the sink. Then, his time is up and Ten takes a deep breath, wiping the expression off his face before opening the door and going back out to Kun. 

 

The next time happens late at night. Ten doesn’t mean for it to - he prefers doing his work in broad daylight where it’s easier to see what happens - to clean up the mess spotlessly. Sometimes he scares himself with his anger, it’s like he watches himself kill from afar - like looking down at his body doing things a normal human never would. Looking down like God would. Ten snorts to himself. If there’s anything that his line of work - or rather, hobby, given that he isn’t being paid for this - is that God doesn’t exist. If he did, wouldn’t he have stopped Ten by now? Sometimes, Ten scares himself, but he always manages to justify it. He only allows himself to kill when it pertains to Kun. Kun is his line. If someone poses a danger to Kun, Ten puts them on his list. He takes time in between kills as well. Months in between because Ten is very fond of his life with Kun and he wouldn’t do anything to put that in jeopardy. Well… he wouldn’t do _much_. 

Ten slides into his home late after the moon has risen, wincing when the door alarm beeps. Another thing he hates about suburbia - the paranoia for security. He takes a quick shower, using the heavily citrus scented body wash Kun had bought him, before slipping into bed next to Kun. His side of the bed is cool but Kun is warm and Ten nuzzles up next to him, soaking up his body heat. Kun stirs, turning around to wrap an arm around Ten’s waist. 

“ _Where were you?”_ He asks, Chinese syllables slurring and it’s only years of learning to understand Kun in this state that Ten picks up on the words. 

“Went out for a jog,” Ten whispers, tangling their legs together, smiling when Kun lets out a hiss when Ten’s cold toes dig into his calves. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Mmm,” Kun tucks his head under the curve of Ten’s jaw, already drifting back off to sleep. _“Go to sleep, darling. We’ll talk in the morning.”_

Ten wraps his arms around Kun’s waist, holding him closer. “Good night,” he hums. 

 

The Bleeder takes out victim after victim, slowly picking his way across their district, plucking off people that hang on the fringe edges of society - that no one would notice gone for a couple days - the ones that pose the greatest threat. 

Ten’s routine stays the same day after day. He gets up, eats breakfast with Kun, kisses him before he goes to work then he goes upstairs to work on translations before vanishing into the woods - sometimes to scout for new places, sometimes to use those places. 

The monotony doesn’t break and despite the mild reprieve he gets with each victim, it returns with a vengeance every time.

Kun notices, because of course he does. They’ve been married for seven years, have known each other for much, much longer than that and Kun knows Ten like he knows the sound of his own breathing. Ten knows this because he knows Kun just as well. 

“What’s wrong?” Kun asks, out of the blue one day, sliding his hands around Ten’s waist and hugging him from the back, propping a pointy chin up on Ten’s shoulder. Except, it’s really not out of the blue, because Ten _knows_ Kun, knows what he looks like when he’s trying to bring up a topic he doesn’t know how to breach. 

Ten sighs, sagging in his hold, trusting Kun to hold him up. It’s no use lying to Kun - not outright anyway. Kun would notice instantly. “It’s just - you know that conversation we had about going back to the city?”

Kun hums. “You’re bored,” he states knowingly. “It’s eating you alive, isn’t it?”

Ten turns in his hold, looping his arms around Kun’s neck. “I love you,” he says because he has to tell Kun that first. “I love my life with you and I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

Kun smiles down at him, his arms a comforting weight around Ten’s waist. “But?”

Ten sighs. “I’m bored,” he admits, soft and on the end whisper of his breath. “I can’t stand it.”

“Then, you’re very lucky you married me, aren’t you?” Kun asks sweetly, sliding his phone out of his back pocket and waving the screen at Ten. “Because we’re heading up to Seattle for the weekend.”

Ten blinks. “What?” He asks in surprise. “Your job-”

“I took off,” Kun interrupts. “We’ve got four days - Friday to Monday night.”

“You _never_ get leave,” Ten says incredulously because it is a well known fact what an absolute _ass_ Kun’s boss is. They’ve had fights over it and they never fight over anything. 

Kun’s smile widens, into something more mischievous and reminiscent of their college days when _he’d_ be the one enticing Ten into all sorts of trouble and watching with quiet glee as Ten tried to sweet talk them out of it. “I did this time,” he says. “We’re leaving tomorrow morning.”

Ten stares at him, mouth parting. “I love you,” he says, tightening his arms around Kun’s neck to pull him into a kiss. “God, I love you so much. I really am the luckiest man alive.”

Kun laughs, sweetly kissing him back. “Well, I’m glad you know it.”

 

Seattle is the city of the lost. Ten loves it. The tall buildings arch up around them, imposing and menacing, when they pull into the city, exhausted after driving, eager to fall into bed. They pass out almost instantly, street clothes still on, not having bothered to wrestle the blankets from the tight bed-making hold that all hotels were somehow similar in, Ten’s face buried in Kun’s leather jacket, his fingers clenched in the collar. 

They wake past midnight and Kun lets Ten leave without complaint, waving him off with a tired smile. Ten shuts the door to Kun slipping into the shower. For a second, his gaze gets caught on the expanse of Kun’s back as he pulls off his shirt and contemplates staying, contemplates all the wonderful things waiting for him in that steamy shower with Kun, but then sighs and shuts the door from the tempting sight. Kun had done so much for him to take him up to Seattle this weekend and Ten would be a fool to squander it. 

Seattle is the city of the lost and Ten takes full advantage of it. The high from his first kill - a quickie done in the back street behind their hotel - is enough to propel him for the next few hours. Ten doesn’t bother staying clean - with himself of course - with the bodies, he is especially meticulous, carefully disposing of them blocks away from the primary location, and stripping them of any forms of identity he can find. He follows the same pattern several times and feels something comforting and solid lock down on his chest - like a subtle release.

Kun’s leather jacket is thrown over his shoulders, the dark colour camouflaging the blood spots and allowing him the discretion he needs to wander back to the hotel, minutes before dawn rises, slipping off the jacket to turn inside out as he passes the sleepy clerk at reception. 

Kun is flicking through the tv channels lazily when Ten opens the door and he raises an eyebrow in greeting. “Good morning,” he says idly, watching Ten take a laundry bag from the closet and throw the jacket into it. 

“I’m going to take a shower,” Ten cocks his hip out and props his hand upon it. “Join me?”

“I just took a shower a couple hours ago,” Kun says amused, but he swings his legs off the bed and Ten grins, turning into the bathroom. 

When the room is full of thick steam and Ten has already stepped under the bruising water pressure, watching the dried blood stream off his body and trickle down the drain in lazy pink rivers, Kun steps in behind him. 

“Do you feel better?” He asks as Ten turns to face him, a grin breaking out on his face as he gently pushes Ten’s hair off his eyes. 

Ten considers himself. It feels like the lid on his internal pressure cooker has been released and all the tension that had been building up inside of him for years had dissipated. He feels - “Wonderful,” Ten says, the noise barely heard over the sound of water. “I feel wonderful.”

A sweet, slow smile spreads across Kun’s face as he gazes at Ten. “I’m glad,” he says, cupping Ten’s cheek. “I was getting worried for a second there.”

Ten kisses him, letting himself drown in the warmth of Kun’s touch, of the heat of the water, of the comfort that always comes with being with Kun. “You made me feel wonderful,” Ten says lowly, pulling away just far enough to push Kun against the shower wall before sinking to his knees. “Now let me do the same for you.”

It occurs to Ten, as he watches Kun swallow around nothing and tip his head back against the wall, the arch of his neck glistening in the low light of the bathroom, a small, shaky noise escaping that perfect mouth, that there is one thing in this world that would make him believe in God. 

 

It’s months and months after their Seattle trip when Ten kills again. 

It’s at night again. Ten despises killing at night and he hopes it won’t become a regular occurrence, scrunching up his face and watching the body drain out below him. It’s a clever kill tonight, if he does say so himself. The blood drains into the large open sewer below him and Ten waits until the body has stopped twitching to strip it of its identity and tipping it in after its blood. It’ll wash up miles away from his neighbourhood, somewhere by the ocean, if fortune favours him and in Ten’s experience, fortune has been on his side often.

When he turns around to leave, he finds Kun standing there, head tipped to one side watching him. 

“What are you doing here?” Ten asks, trying not to show any outward sign of his heart threatening to hammer out of his ribcage in surprise. Kun isn’t looking at him, he’s looking somewhere beyond Ten, at the sewer behind him, and he doesn’t answer. Ten takes a step closer. “Kun?”

Kun blinks away and stares at Ten for a second as if trying to process his words. “I wanted to see what it was you liked about it.” He swallows, stepping forward, glancing behind Ten again. “About killing.”

“You’ve never shown up before,” Ten points out, trying to calm the shaking in his voice. It was their silent secret - one they never discussed in their home but one both of them knew existed. Kun never went with Ten on his killings and Ten never brought his… hobby home. 

Kun looks back at him. “You’ve never gotten this bad before.”

They stare at each other in silence and Ten tries not to tremble. He doesn’t know what Kun means, but if he’s insinuating leaving- breaking it off - _something_ that indicates him leaving Ten, Ten doesn’t know what he’s going to do. “What-” Ten clears his throat when his voice cracks halfway through the word. “What do you mean?” 

Kun takes a quiet breath, something on this side of a sigh. “I wanted to know what about killing makes you so happy. The happiness that I can’t give you.”

All of Ten’s breath leaves his lungs as if slammed out by a hammer - one of those padded ones they have at carnivals to hit clown’s faces to get a sparkling score. It feels like that right now, like all of Ten’s air has left him, leaving him with sparkling nothing. “You,” Ten gasps out, sucking in a desperate lungful of air. “You’ve giving me _everything_.”

“Not enough,” Kun points out. “You’re doing it more and more - more than you used to. And I’m just…” Kun takes a breath, steadying himself and that’s when Ten knows that something is horribly, gut wrenchingly wrong. Because Kun doesn’t ever need steadying, he _is_ steadiness personified. He doesn’t take pauses in between sentences. He doesn’t do _this_. “I’m scared you’ll leave me when I get too boring for you.”

“But you’re my _everything_ ,” Ten insists again because he doesn’t know how else to explain it to Kun. He stumbles forward, clutching Kun’s hands in his own, not even noticing when he smears Kun’s hands in blood. “Kun, my _darling_ , you are my everything. You are my whole life. This-” Ten gestures behind him. “This means nothing to me when held against you.”

Kun gazes at him but there’s no sign of conviction in his eyes and Ten can’t have that. He can’t lose Kun. Kun is his line. Kun is his moral compass. If he loses Kun, what else does he have left?

A shaking hand finds its way up to Kun’s cheek. “We have known each other for fifteen years,” Ten breathes, clutching Kun close towards him, eyes darting all over his face, tracing out every curve and dip that is as familiar to him as his own face. “And you have been the center of my universe since the first day. If you want me to stop, I will. If you want me to walk away and never touch another person again, I will. I’ll do _anything_ , for you because you, _you,_ Kun, you are my _everything_.” Ten stares at him, his breath coming in shaky fast gasps. “Do you understand? There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

“Oh,” Kun says, a soft exhale of parted lips. “Ten.” That's all it takes, two hushed syllables and Ten falls into him, shaking hands clutching his face. Kun’s mouth is soft and sweet and it tastes of coming home. 

“I’ll quit,” Ten whispers into the space between their mouths. “I’ll never give you reason to doubt me again.”

Kun closes his eyes and holds him tight. “No,” he murmurs. “What kind of a husband would I be if I stopped you from this.”

“A law abiding one,” Ten points out, a shaky laugh leaving him and the look on Kun’s face is far too fond for him to handle, so Ten buries his face in the crook between Kun’s neck and shoulder and holds on. Holds on tight to the one thing that is good in his life. To the one the thing that has brought him close to believing in God. To his everything.

 

Suburbia is mind numbingly, awfully, time consumingly mundane. But, Ten ruminates as Kun slides into him, pressing into all the right places, knowing how to wind up Ten’s body like a toy after years and years of experience and pulling a reedy thin gasp out of him, sometimes mundane is something he likes. 

“Hey,” Kun chides, kissing the side the side of Ten’s cheek. “Attention back up here, killer. I’m not doing all this work for you to daydream in your head.”

“I hate that you’ve decided to outwardly embrace this,” Ten informs him, kissing him and drawing his legs up to Kun’s sides. 

Kun’s smile is nothing short of blinding. “Secrets make for great sex, darling,” is all he says before drawing back and pressing back into Ten with all the force of a wrecking ball. Ten’s eyes roll back in his head and he lets a short noise leave him, his nails clawing down Kun’s back. “See?” Kun whispers tantalizingly. “You’re already undone by me.”

“That was true from the very first day we met,” Ten manages, a short laugh huffing out of him at Kun rolling his eyes in exasperation. 

“Shut up before I kill you,” Kun mutters leaning down to kiss him.

“Oh,” Ten gasps, looping his arms around Kun’s neck, pleasure rolling through him and lighting up all his nerve endings. “Do you promise?” 

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you thought!
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/_donghyuck_)  
> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/hyxcheis)  
> 


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